Sunday, December 02, 2007

Why Does ESPN Hate The Nats?

(The cool kids tell me that you need to rip ESPN if you're going to call yourself a blog)

The Mets released their tentative schedule the other day, and it was notable in that it didn't include a Sunday Night game in DC to start the season. I chalked that up to being tentative, but a throw-away line in the Daily News indicates that that might not be the case: "The Nationals had lobbied MLB for their new stadium to be unveiled with the opening Sunday night game against the Mets, but ESPN balked at that matchup."

The past tense of that makes it seem like a done deal.

I'm shocked! Shocked that ESPN wouldn't want to carry a game featuring one of the worst draws in all of sports. Don't they know that the opening of the new park is an event of great historical significance?

Ah- I thought this was going to be a story trying to figure why Keith Law and Buster Olney hate the Nats so much. But that's ESPN.com, not ESPN TV.

So getting on topic- I am shocked (SHOCKED!) that hometown ESPN boys Kornheiser and Wilbon didn't lobby the network to carry the game. Well, at least we can count on Wilbon to write a scathing article decrying the oversight, a day or so after Boswell notices that the Nats made a trade the other day for a potential big star.

Am I sad? Yes. Shocked? No. I know how I feel about ESPN, and this latest news isn't surprising in the least, not to me. Whether this incident is or isn't random, ESPN was developed in a ratings-driven world, embraced it, claimed it, loved to run in it and refused to divorce itself from it. This ain't the first and won't be the last. We have no idea what happened, or if what we know now will be revised later. It's sad, yes, but hardly surprising.

Not only am I not surprised, but I really can't blame them. Let's face it, the Nats aren't popular and we don't have anything that could be called "Nationals Nation" although that phrase would be both redundant and annoying considering how much it's overused already. Even if the Nationals could make a better case now after the Milledge trade, there are still no compelling storylines. Something more interested would be Yankees/Red Sox or Yankees/Dodgers (yes, I know that inter-league doesn't start that early) or some repeat of last year's post-season. Either that, or they do some death tie-in or some steroid tie in. We might be the Nationals, but we don't know drama (which, I suppose is a good thing in many ways).

So how can a Nats fan living in the NY area see any games this year? Do I need to buy the MLBTV package thing?

I live in New Jersey and I just switched teams from The Mets to The Nats. It's not about being fair-weather - I just really object to The Omar and Willie show, and I'm respectfully and seriously changing teams.

I was watching college football on one of the ESPN's on Friday night and noticed that during the MLB portion of the lower-third scroll, there was no mention of the Milledge-Church/Schneider trade. I watched as the scroll cycled around three times and each time under the MLB section, no mention of the trade. ESPN really doesn't think the Nats are worthy of any attention.